


Stuck In The Fade

by lyngan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Classless Hawke, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Hawke sacrificed, Here Lies The Abyss quest, I mean not specifically warrior or rogue or mage, Purple Hawke, When is Hawke ever classy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 20:07:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19027015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyngan/pseuds/lyngan
Summary: Hawke sacrifices herself in The Fade (DA:I Here Lies The Abyss), but she wins the fight against the monstrous spider beast and... well now what can she do? She's Stuck In The Fade!(Fem Hawke has no specified class or first name)





	Stuck In The Fade

**Author's Note:**

> As stated in description, Hawke is fem but has no specified class or first name. I also tried to be pretty vague about both the inquisitor and the warden ally so you can input more of your own playthrough onto this. (So Inquisitor and Warden Ally both have no gender, name, race, or class)

Hawke panted heavily, looking around at the mess of pieces of nightmare demon spider thingy that surrounded her. She didn’t dare let go of her weapon, didn’t dare let down her guard. She couldn’t imagine how the creature might revive itself, especially considering the sheer number of pieces she’d turned it into.

Hawke wiped one hand down her armour in the vain hope that it might clear some of the green-red, not-quite-brown blood off her skin. She tried not to think too hard on what kind of adverse effects fade monster blood might have on her skin.

As her heart beat calmed enough to hear the soft whoosh of The Fade – like leaves in the breeze or the sea upon sand – Hawke realised the predicament she had ended up in.

Stuck in The Fade.

Finally the mess around her started to congeal. She picked her way out of it, not entirely convinced that the thing wouldn’t revive itself still. But, for now, for as long as it stayed dead, Hawke could start to make a plan.

Now… what could that plan contain?

How did one escape The Fade when they had been physically brought into it?

If it had been like when Hawke rescued Feynriel she might have tried going to sleep, or even calling to Feynriel, but, as far as Hawke could tell, she would need a physical exit in the same way she had used a physical entrance.

She hadn’t intended for this – then again, Hawke never got what she intended. Her whole like had been one surprise twist after another. Losing her father, Bethany, Carver, and her mother. Finding a family in Kirkwall only for that to come crashing down around her. Anders’s choice had split Hawke’s found family down the middle and finally sarcastic remarks weren’t enough to get by.

She had lost touch with almost all of her Kirkwall Champions since the day Meredith had died, the day Hawke had left the city. The day she had realised Kirkwall was beyond her help. She had been taught the hard way that, even if you try to make the right choices and try to help and protect, sometimes none of your actions matter. Sometimes you just make everything worse.

Varric had told her as soon as the Inquisition picked him up. He’d been keeping her appraised of all the goings on. He had known better than to ask her to come to their aid. Hawke had been grateful for that. She wasn’t prepared to lead something like an inquisition. The Kirkwall Champions had been her friends, willing to help out or in need of some quick coin. An inquisition was a big investment, a huge undertaking and it needed a leader who wasn’t going to question their every choice based on one horrible memory.

The inquisitor seemed to be managing. A little star struck when Hawke had turned up on the battlements but Hawke mainly put that down to Varric telling too many stories. He had always been such a good storyteller, always the best at making you feel like you tried your best. He was the perfect companion for keeping you cheerful when you’d been wandering the deep roads for weeks with no sign of sunlight and too many elves who thrived on sunlight. He even managed to cheer Hawke up on that first mission after her mother’s death, wandering up and down the Wounded Coast in the rain for hours, soaked through and feeling like a drowned nug. Hawke was pretty sure Varric had even made Fenris laugh a time or two.

When he’d written to Hawke about Corypheus and the Grey Wardens it had finally spurred her into action. She had decided it warranted her appearance, her attempt to help out, at least with this one aspect.

Landing in The Fade had been quite the experience. Reliving the inquisitor’s memories, and then there was the Grey Warden situation and the debate Hawke had ended up in as they travelled through The Fade together.

If asked, Hawke would say something about wanting to seem heroic, wanting stories to tell about her heroic sacrifice, to balance out against the end of the Kirkwall story. She knew that the Grey Wardens needed leaders, better leaders than they had before, and who better than someone willing to sacrifice themself for others?

Hawke wandered to the edge of the pocket of The Fade that the Nightmare Demon occupied. She found solid edges where there should have been more Fade. She turned back, passing a shockingly large number of mirrors. The fear started to fade, replaced by Hawke’s regular sarcastic inner monologue. She decided Nightmare must really love to look at itself with the number of mirrors.

Pausing by one Hawke decided to amend her opinion, Nightmare must love the idea of no reflection where there should be one. Something tickled the back of Hawke’s mind, but a group of spider-fear-beasts scuttled out of the shadows and chased it away.

Days could have passed and Hawke wouldn’t have known. She wandered from one end of the Nightmare Fade Pocket to the other. Tiredness didn’t touch her. Hunger didn’t rumble in her stomach. Her throat didn’t beg for water. The groups of spider-fear-beasts became fewer and further between.

Hawke examined the corpses and skeletons lying around. Not a torn trouser to be found among them, Hawke was disappointed to note. There had never been quite so many torn trousers as she had found in Kirkwall.

A pair of skeletons lay at the foot of a mirror, as if they had stepped out of it only to die. Hawke crouched to examine the bodies, trying to create a story around why they had appeared in the Nightmare Fade Pocket. One of them had a Dalish hunter’s necklace, like the ones the team had picked up when Keeper Marethari had sent them after the Varterall.

Hawke examined the amulet for so long that her legs began to ache from crouching. She stuffed the amulet into her pack, wishing she could read Dalish. Again, a thought tickled the back of her mind, something about the Dalish, or Merrill, and a mirror…

The Eluvian!

Hawke spun on her heel, marching back toward the mirror with the Dalish skeletons in front of it. It had definitely been a good idea to encourage Merrill away from fixing the Eluvian if this was where it led. Although they had killed the demon spirit that Merrill had partnered with in her attempts to fix it, so it couldn’t have been Nightmare. Hawke glanced over toward where the body of Nightmare lay; fear prickling at the back of her neck that it might revive itself.

Examining the non-reflective mirror, Hawke remembered Merrill had smashed the Eluvian after the death of Keeper Marethari. It wouldn’t matter that Hawke knew what the mirror was, it wouldn’t matter that Hawke had found the other half; nothing would matter because Merrill had smashed the Eluvian and nobody else was going to be working with such dangerous things.

Hawke slumped to the floor. She was just going to have to accept that she would die in The Fade.

Fenris’s voice echoed through Hawke’s mind. “Promise me you won’t die, I can’t bear the thought of living without you.”

Hawke took a deep breath of fade scented air. Too light in her lungs, too fake. The distinct opposite of the stagnant heavy air of The Deep Roads.

She clambered to her feet. A promise was a promise and any promise to Fenris was one Hawke would keep. He had stood with her through so much, more than she could count. They had stood together against the worst things that could have happened – or so Hawke had thought.

There were plenty of other Eluvians to check out; Hawke would just have to hope that one of those worked. It might not be a great lead but it was the best Hawke had. She decided to start at one end and work her way to the other, checking each Eluvian she came across.

Eluvian number one had a crack down its centre. Hawke sighed and turned to search out Eluvian number two.

That one had the same blank face Merrill’s one had had. Hawke poked at it and knocked on the glass.

Eluvian number three’s glass lay shattered at its base.

26 Eluvians later, Hawke’s resolve had passed through waning all the way to gone. As she stared into yet another non-reflective surface she once again wondered if there was any chance of escape. Even death seemed impossible with the lack of typical bodily experiences and the fact that Hawke couldn’t even remember the last time she had come across any spider-fear-beasts.

She could very well be here for all eternity.

“I’m sorry Fenris…” she whispered, sinking to the floor and pulling her knees to her chest. “I tried.”

 

Hawke couldn’t say how long she stayed there – days, weeks, months – lost to the emptiness and loneliness of The Fade. Maybe she would waste away like the bodies around her. Maybe more nightmare beasts would spawn and feast on her, at least that would be an end.

 

A yell echoed through The Fade Pocket. Huge, deafening, and angry. The air around Hawke crackled blue, tinged with the burning scent of lyrium.

“Hawke!”

“Fenris?” Hawke jerked painfully out of her ball of sadness.

A huge blue and turquoise hole had appeared in the sky, ripping through the icky greenness of the rest of the area. Fenris’s hand thrust through the tear.

“Hawke, take my hand.”

Shadowy figures crowded around Fenris’s shoulders, impossible to distinguish much beyond their presence.

“Hawke Now!” Fenris ordered.

Hawke reached up, fingers just brushing against Fenris’s bare hands, lyrium scars glowing brightly as he stretched further to reach her.

“How do I know you’re real?” Hawke retracted her hand just a little.

“Can’t be any worse than staying where you are.” Varric’s gravelly voice rumbled out of the shadows behind Fenris.

Fenris rolled his eyes, a fairly new gesture for him. He had been trained out of it under Danarius’s rule. It told Hawke that this was Fenris, or at least a very good copy.

She jumped.

 

Hawke’s body ached. Exhausted, Starving, parched.

“Healer!” Someone that sounded like Fenris ordered.

In Hawke’s more sentient moments she could swear she heard her Kirkwall Companions at her side.

Merrill telling her not to follow paths in the fade.

Aveline commanding her to stick around, saying she wasn’t losing Hawke, not today.

Isabela cracking jokes.

Varric promising to get her out of this.

And Fenris, always at her side.

 

Hawke forced her eyes open. She felt like she had been hit by a harvesting blood mage and a few too many ogres. Or like that time at The Bone Pit when she had been convinced that the dragon had killed her, only to wake up to Anders’s brown eyes and concerned voice.

Now though, Hawke found herself in a stone room, lying on a surprisingly comfortable bed, under an aged by fancy blanket. She pushed herself into a sitting position. If this was The Fade it was unlike any area she had visited before.

A soft snore to her left had Hawke scrambling for her weapon, only to realise Fenris slept curled up in a chair next to the bed. His eyebrows had pinched together, even in sleep. His face was drawn, dark circles under his eyes.

Hawke couldn’t help but reach for him.

Fenris jerked awake, lyrium embedded in his skin flaring to life for just a second before he realised where he was.

His face softened, hand reaching for Hawke. He touched her face, as if reassuring himself she was real. Hawke clung to his hand.

“What happened?” she asked

“Before or after you made a hundred horrible choices in a row?”

“I mean, you’ll have to be more specific than that,” Hawke joked.

“What were you thinking?” Blue light flickered down his arms, like a dog raising its hackles.

“You know me, I wasn’t.”

“Don’t think your sense of humour will get you out of this.” Fenris tried to glare but the twitch at the corner of his mouth told Hawke she was wearing him down already.

“I couldn’t let the only good Grey Warden left die, could I? They’re the only ones who can stop the Blight.”

“Do you always have to involve us in huge political disasters?”

“Fenris, we are a huge political disaster.”

This time Fenris couldn’t keep in the chuckle.

Hawke held out her arms, inviting him into the bed with her. Surprisingly he accepted the invitation – either Fenris had been really concerned or their location was more private than Hawke expected “Where are we?”

“Skyhold – the inquisition base.”

“How? Also why?”

“Varric sent me your final regards.”

Hawke winced.

“I called in some favours to get you back.”

“I thought you were too spiky for favours.”

“You’re not.”

“You called in **_my_** favours?”

“And you are welcome.”

Hawke laughed, snuggling into Fenris’s side.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for spelling errors (especially with Dragon Age specific terms) I have dyslexia and it does not like names.


End file.
